Hi guy's and gal's, would not normally post this type of question, but just noticed something that has recently happened........and maybe someone could shed some light on the problem and resolve.... Dvdrom is LG GDR-8161B as Primary slave 80 way ide. This device has been used for months for mainly ripping purposes and general stuff. It has not had a firmware 'flash'. Windows XP - just ATAPI - No ASPI installed. Original drivers within XP being used. The problem is the read rate has now maxed at 2.5x, before I could obtain between 5x and 12x no problems. There has been no modifications at all, just happened over night..... I have noticed that if I go into dev manager/ide controller etc... the Dvdrom is set to PIO mode, I cannot firmly state whether this has always been set to PIO mode, but now it is, I know this is where my problem lies...however I cannot change it.... I can select to either use PIO or DMA if available, but the current transfer rate is stuck in PIO mode. According to the specifications, the Dvdrom can use: PIO mode 4 Multiword DMA Mode2 Ultra DMA Mode2 Therefore I can safely assume that the Dvdrom should be able to run in DMA mode as it is available according to the specs.... Can anyone shed some light on how I can alter this? My Bios is all set to auto detection on PIO or DMA and no changes have been made. Thanks in advance
Have you tried removing it in Device Manager and having Windows find it again? From what I understand, Windows will sometimes change the mode and not allow you to change it back if it's had problems in DMA mode a few times, and just removing and reinstalling the drive normally fixes it.
Hiya baabaa, vurbal is pointing you in the right direction there. Basically, whenever Windows initiates access to a mass storage device it sends an initialisation string to check availability - especially so of removable storage. If the device does not respond correctly to the DMA nitialisation, it is then tried in PIO mode. This can also happen during normal usage if a read-error count exceeds a preset value (I believe it is 6). Possible causes are: 1 - A device on the IDE chain is slow to respond (multiple devices on one chain) 2 - The device is failing gracefully 3 - Poor contact (corrosion, cable breaking down, cable dislodged etc...) 4 - Master/Slave jumper contacts dirty 6 - IDE cable routed close to high-current (induction induced errors) 7 - Low-Level device driver corruption (Windows problem) Possible Solutions are: 1 - Remove and re-seat IDE cables 2 - Remove and re-seat Master/Slave jumpers 3 - In Device Manager, remove the device and allow the system to re-detect on boot-up 4 - Remove any other device on the IDE chain Then test. Hope this helps. Byeee...
Cheers for the responses guys...much appreciated.. However still no cigar though...... :-( I may have an underlying problem aswell.... Just to give you some more info on my device setup: CPU - Pentium IV 2.4Ghz Hyepr thread etc Memory - 1Gb DDR PC3200 Motherboard - SIS648FX Primary master - 60Gb HD Primary slave - LG dvdrom - this is the problem one Secondary Master - Pioneer 106 Secondary slave - 120Gb HD All connections are solid and jumpers ok. Now, I uninstalled the device and physically disconnected the device, so Primary only had the HD on. When I tried to reboot, it hung during POST and would not detect the IDE devices. My machine WOULD only boot if I had 2 devices connected to the Primary as master and slave??????????????????????? So I reconnected the device and got the PC to boot, windows recognised it and drivers were loaded etc.....but still stuck in PIO mode.........!!!!!! Now, I disconnected ALL IDE devices except my main HD. So all I had was a HD as Primary master connected, and still the PC would not detect the IDE device connected and just hung during POST.... (IDE cables replaced just to be sure) It seems to me that I may have a BIOS or Motherboard related issue here and not a windows problem, trouble is I do not want to flash the BIOS or anything until I am sure the area which is causing the issue.... Any input on whether this is the underlying problem OR even another problem would be gratefully received. Cheers guys............
Well it is official....Bill Gates, if you are reading....you are a tosser.....LOL [bold]UPDATE:[/bold] Sorted the PIO mode issue..........baabaa basking on a clifftop again in brand new red wellies.....LOL [bold]Uninstalled the Primary IDE controller.....and reinstalled on startup.....back in the Ultradma groove again......[/bold] Why did it alter in the first place?, I went onto Microsoft and probed around the statements which all related to crc errors or alike, if too many occur then windows automatically alters it to PIO mode, irrespective of the setting selected.... I would have assumed this would be reset after a cold boot, returning it too the original setting.... The statements relate to a HD, but could this also be the same with an optical device????? If so, then whilst ripping or general use and there are several errors crc etc, then this is what may have triggered the change of mode....what do you think, does that hold any water? Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated..... However, can anyone shine a light on the issue regarding the POST problem I encountered.....that is still evident if I only have my HD as Primary master on it's own.........BIOS or something else......? Catch you later........baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! _ _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down [/small]
I've run into that problem (didn't see single drive on IDE channel that is) on a couple of computers in the past. I was only able to get them to POST by setting the drive to slave instead of master. Both comptuers had Super 7 CPUs, and there were a lot of crappy BIOS chips on those motherboards. It also might work if you set the drive to Cable Select. If you're curious you could try it just to see, but if you believe in computer voodoo (like I do) you won't mess with anything you don't have to.
Cheers vurbal, I know exactly what your talking about... If it works form day one, and suddenly alters for no apparent reason, then there is a reluctance in flashing/patching anything just to make it work again, without complete understanding of the problem at hand........ I may try the cable select option tomorrow etc and other possibles but, as the initial problem has ironed itself out, there may not be a need to try but....hell, this is how we become more competent and learn....... Still I remember when I made this PC, all the devices were present, so I did not build it up from one HD and then add other IDE devices, so that issue regarding POST may have been present from the start, but I did not notice it until now. I do feel though that XP does modify the front end of the boot up process, therefore has more control over the addition of extra devices on the IDE...... You guys, pointed out an obvious route to look into and it is much appreciated, thanks again..... Hope to speak to you both soon on the forums.....regarding more [bold] Billy Gates issues [/bold].........LOL
In my experience, the solution you don't think of is usually an obvious one. That's why I always hate it when I'm the only IT person somewhere. And despite my own "rules" about changing things on my computer just to see, I'm like you - eventually I'll just need to know and mess with it anyway. Let us know if you decide to try it on cable select and it works. You've got me curious now.
